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Dream of the Rarebit Fiend
|last = |altnames = *''The Dream of a Lobster Fiend'' *''Midsummer Day Dreams'' *''It Was Only a Dream'' *''Rarebit Reveries'' |publisher = New York Herald |preceded by = Little Sammy Sneeze |followed by = Little Nemo }} Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was a newspaper comic strip by American cartoonist Winsor McCay which began September 10, 1904. As in McCay's signature strip, Little Nemo, the strip was made up of bizarre dreams. It was McCay's second successful strip, after Little Sammy Sneeze secured him a position on the cartoon staff of the New York Herald. Rarebit Fiend was printed in the Evening Telegram, a newspaper published by the Herald. For contractual reasons, McCay signed the strip with the pen name "Silas". The strip had no continuity or recurring characters. Instead, it had a recurring theme: a character would have a nightmare or other bizarre dream, usually after eating a Welsh rarebit (a cheese-on-toast dish). The character would awaken from the dream in the last panel, regretting having eaten the rarebit. The dreams often revealed the darker sides of the dreamers' psyches—their phobias, hypocrisies, discomforts, and dark fantasies. This was in great contrast to the colorful, childlike fantasy dreams in Little Nemo. The strip is mostly recognized as an adult-oriented precursor to Nemo. The popularity of Rarebit Fiend and Nemo led to McCay being hired for William Randolph Hearst's chain of newspapers with a star's salary. His editor there thought his highly skilled cartooning was "serious, not funny", and he was made to give up comic strips to do editorial cartooning. The strip was revived 1923–1925 as Rarebit Reveries, though few examples have survived. Rarebit Fiend was the inspiration for a number of films, including Edwin S. Porter's live-action Dream of a Rarebit Fiend in 1906, and four pioneering animated films by McCay himself: How a Mosquito Operates in 1912, and 1921's Bug Vaudeville, The Pet and The Flying House. The strip is said to have anticipated a number of recurring ideas in popular culture, such as giant characters damaging cities (as later popularized by King Kong and Godzilla). Overview right|thumb|alt=Photograph of a Welsh rarebit, melted cheese on toast|A Welsh rarebit—seasoned melted cheese on toast Winsor McCay first produced the hallucinogenic Dream of the Rarebit Fiend in 1904, a year before his dream romps of Little Nemo and a full generation before the Surrealist movement unleashed their subconscious on the public. The strip had no recurring characters, but followed one theme: after eating a Welsh rarebit, the day's protagonist would be subject to the darker side of his or her psyche. Typically, the strip would begin with an absurd situation, which would progressively become more absurd until the Fiend—the dreamer—awakened in the final panel. Some situations were merely silly: elephants falling from the ceiling, or two ladies' mink coats having a fight. Other times, they could be more disturbing: characters would find themselves dismembered, another buried alive from a first-person perspective or a child's mother being planted and becoming a tree. In some strips, the Fiend was a spectator, watching fantastic or horrible things happen to someone close to themselves. The typically bourgeois, urban protagonists were often subjected to fears related to public humiliation or loss of social esteem or respectability. Rarebit Fiend was the only of McCay's strips in which he took on social or political topics, or dealt with contemporary life. He addressed religious leaders, alcoholism, homelessness, political speeches, suicide, fashion, and other topics, unlike his other strips which had fantasy or seemingly vague, timeless backgrounds. The strip had a number of references to contemporary events, such as the 1904 election of Theodore Roosevelt; the recently built Flatiron Building (1902) and St. Regis Hotel (1904) in New York City; and the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War. thumb|left|100px|alt=Drawing of a boy, Little Nemo, by Winsor McCay|[[wikipedia:Little Nemo|Little Nemo was prefigured in Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. |]] The rarebit, a dish typically made with rich cheese thinned with ale, and served melted on toast with cayenne and mustard mixed in, was used despite its innocuousness—according to cultural theorist Scott Bukatman, it was not the sort of dish one would associate with having nightmares. On two occasions other mind-altering substances may have caused the dreams: wood alcohol on October 21, 1904, and opium on August 19, 1905. McCay's most famous character, Little Nemo, was first prefigured in the first year of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, on December 10, 1904. In 1905, McCay would have the character appear in his own strip in the New York Herald. In comparison to that better-known strip, the Rarebit Fiend strips had minimal backgrounds, and were usually done from a fixed perspective, with the main characters often in a fixed position. The content of Rarebit Fiend played a much bigger role than it did in Little Nemo, whose focus was on beautiful visuals. The stories were self-contained, whereas the Nemo story continued from week to week. The dreams in Nemo were aimed at children, but Rarebit Fiend had more adult-oriented subjects—social embarrassment, fear of dying or going insane, and so on—although some of the dreams in both strips were wish-fulfillment fantasies. Unlike most comic strips at the time, Rarebit Fiend was not humorous or escapist. The strips highlighted readers' darker selves—hypocrisies, deceitfulness, phobias and discomfort. The strip offered often biting social commentary, and marital, money and religious matters are shown in a negative light. McCay was interested in pushing formal boundaries, and playful self-referentiality played a role in many of the strips, with characters sometimes referring to McCay's alter-ego "Silas", or to the reader. Though frequent in Rarebit Fiend, this self-referentiality does not appear in McCay's other strips. In contrast to the skilled artwork, the lettering in the dialogue balloons, like in McCay's other work, was awkward and could approach illegibility, especially in reproductions, where the artwork was normally greatly reduced in size. McCay seemed to show little regard for the dialogue balloons, their content, and their placement in the visual composition. They tended to contain repetitive monologues expressing the increasing distress of the speakers, and showed that McCay's gift was in the visual and not the verbal. Background thumb|alt=A black-and-white photograph of a seated middle-aged, balding man in a suit and tie, head leaning lightly on his right hand|[[wikipedia:Winsor McCay|McCay's rocky marriage affected his outlook in Rarebit Fiend.|]] McCay had begun cartooning in the 1890s and had a prolific output published in magazines and newspapers. He became known for his ability to draw quickly, a talent he often employed during chalk talks on the Vaudeville stage (alongside the likes of Harry Houdini and W. C. Fields). Prior to Dream of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo, McCay had shown an interest the topic of dreams. Some of his earlier work, numbering at least 10 regular comics, had titles such as Daydreams and It Was Only a Dream. McCay's were not the first dream-themed comic strips to be published. McCay's employer, the New York Herald, had printed at least three such strips, beginning with Charles Reese's Drowsy Dick in 1902. Psychoanalysis and dream interpretation had begun to enter the public consciousness with the 1900 publication of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. McCay first proposed a strip in which a tobacco fiend finds himself at the North Pole, unable to secure a cigarette and a light. In the last panel the fiend awakens to find it a dream. The Herald asked him to make the cartoon into a series, but with a Welsh rarebit theme instead of tobacco, and McCay complied. The strip was published in a Herald subsidiary, the Evening Telegram, and the Herald s editor required McCay to use a pseudonym for the strip work to keep it separate from his other work. McCay signed Rarebit Fiend strips as "Silas", borrowing the name of a neighbourhood garbage cart driver. After switching to William Randolph Hearst's New York American newspaper in 1911, McCay dropped the "Silas" pseudonym and signed his work in his own name. McCay married in 1891, and the marriage was not a happy one. According to McCay biographer John Canemaker, marriage is depicted in Rarebit Fiend as "a minefield of hypocrisy, jealousy, and misunderstanding". McCay was a short man, barely five feet ( ) tall. He was dominated by his wife, who stood as tall as he was. Images of small, shy men dominated by their taller or fatter wives appeared frequently in Rarebit Fiend. Gigantism, with characters being overwhelmed by rapidly growing elements, was another recurring motif, perhaps as compensation on McCay's part for a sense of smallness. McCay's brother, Arthur, had been put away in a mental asylum, which may have inspired the themes of insanity which are common in the strip. thumb|500px|center|alt=Two panels of a comic strip of a man being buried alive|Buried alive (25 February 1905) Despite the bleak view in the strip, McCay's work was so popular that he was hired by William Randolph Hearst in 1911 with a star's salary. His work was deemed by editor Arthur Brisbane to be "serious, not funny", and he was made to give up his comic strips (including Rarebit Fiend and Nemo) to work full-time illustrating editorials. Influences right|thumb|alt=Drawing of Alice floating in a pool of tears|''[[wikipedia:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland|Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' was a likely influence which anticipated ideas in McCay's strips. |]] Scholars such as Claude Moliterni, Ulrich Merkl, Alfredo Castelli and others have hunted down what they believe to have influenced McCay's work on Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. Amongst the possible influences are Edward Lear's popular The Book of Nonsense (1870), Gelett Burgess' The Burgess Nonsense Book (1901), Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (particularly the pool of tears scene, which seems related to the flood of sweat in one early Rarebit Fiend strip ), and a variety of dream cartoons and illustrations that appeared in various periodicals with which McCay was likely familiar. What was the most probable immediate influence on the strip was Welsh Rarebit Tales (1902) by Harle Oren Cummins. This collection of 15 science fiction stories were inspired, according to Cummins, by nightmares brought on by eating Welsh Rarebit and lobster—making further likely the influence, as several post-''Herald'' strips from 1911 and 1912 were titled Dream of a Lobster Fiend. Other influences which have been established include H. G. Wells, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1902), Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and the Engineer's Thumb (1889), Henryk Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis (1896), Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Mark Twain's The 1,000,000 Pound Bank-Note (1893). McCay never acknowledged the influence of Sigmund Freud, whose The Interpretation of Dreams had been published in 1900. According to McCay scholar Ulrich Merkl, however, it is likely he was aware of the Viennese doctor's theories, as they had been widely reported and talked about in the New York newspaper world of which McCay was a part. Publishing history thumb|350px|alt=Rarebit fiend comic strip of giant man romping through New York City|A giant man romps through New York City (7 January 1905). Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was McCay's longest running comic strip. McCay made more than 300 more Rarebit Fiend episodes than he made of the more famous Little Nemo. The first strip appeared on September 10, 1904, in the New York Herald, a few months after the first appearance of McCay's Little Sammy Sneeze. It was McCay's second successful newspaper strip, after Sammy Sneeze landed him a position on the cartooning staff of the Herald. Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was printed in the Evening Telegram, which was published by the Herald at the time. The strip appeared two to three times a week. It typically filled up a quarter of a newspaper page on weekdays, and half a page on Saturdays. The strip normally appeared in black-and-white, but 29 of the strips appeared in color throughout 1913, run weekly in the Herald. These were strips drawn between 1908 and 1911 which the Evening Telegram had neglected to print. McCay sometimes encouraged readers to submit dream ideas, to be sent care of the Herald to "Silas the Dreamer" McCay acknowledged the submissions he accepted with a "thanks to..." on the strip beside his own signature. Amongst those credited were science fiction pioneer Hugo Gernsback. Dream of the Rarebit Fiend ran until 1911. It was revived in various papers between 1911 and 1913 under other titles, such as Midsummer Day Dreams and It Was Only a Dream. From 1923 to 1925, the strip was revived under the title Rarebit Reveries. Though signed "Robert Winsor McCay Jr." (McCay's son), the strips appear to be in McCay's own hand, with the possible exception of the lettering. McCay had also signed his son's name to some of his animation and editorial cartoons. Only seven examples of Rarebit Reveries are known, though it is nearly certain others were printed. Collections [[wikipedia:File:Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend (Stokes 1905) cover.jpg|thumb|alt=A monochromatic book cover. At the top in large bold letters reads "Dreams of the", followed by an illustration of a man covered in cheese, followed by "Rarebit Fiend" in bold. Below reads, "New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company: Publishers|Cover of the first collection, Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend (1905)]] The earliest collection, under the title Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, appeared in 1905 from Frederick A. Stokes, reprinting 61 of the strips. This collection was reprinted in 1973 in a 10% enlarged edition by Dover Publications, with new introductory material. The Dover edition dropped the final strip from the original collection, however, as it contained ethnic humor that the publisher believed would not be to the taste of a 1970s audience. Rarebit Fiend examples can be found in Daydreams and Nightmares (Fantagraphics, 1988/2006; editor Richard Marschall), a collection of miscellaneous work by McCay. Checker Books published the series Winsor McCay: Early Works, which reprinted many of the Rarebit Fiend strips over eight volumes. Checker released Dream of the Rarebit Fiend: The Saturdays (ISBN 978-1-933-16065-8) in 2006 which reprinted 183 of the color Saturday strips. The Checker books reprinted all but about 300 of the known Rarebit Fiend strips. In July 2007, German art historian Ulrich Merkl self-published a , 464-page volume called Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, reproducing 369 of the strips in full size. Previous reprintings of the strip reduced the strips to about a third of their originally published size, resulting in loss of detail and making the lettering hard to read. The size of the book made automatic binding impossible, so it had to be bound by hand. The book was limited to 1000 copies, and a DVD was included with scans of the 821 known installments of the strip, the complete text of the book, a catalogue raisonné of the strips, and a video of an example of McCay's animation. The sources of the strips were from both Merkl's personal collection, the Cartoon Research Library of the Ohio State University, and microfilms purchased from the New York Public Library containing the complete New York Evening Journal run of the strip. Merkl has said that, on average, six hours were required per strip for scanning and restoration. The book also featured two essays by Italian comics editor Alfredo Castelli and one by Jeremey Taylor, former president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Legacy thumb|right|100px|alt=Poster of King King standing on the Empire State Building|Giants damaging cities and other ideas have become a part of pop culture. Rarebit Fiend set up a formula which McCay would more famously put to use in Little Nemo. A large number of the Nemo strips used ideas recycled from Rarebit Fiend, such as the October 31, 1907, "walking bed" episode, which was used in the July 26, 1908, episode of Little Nemo. Comics scholar Jeet Heer called Rarebit Fiend "perhaps the most bizarre newspaper feature in American history". According to Merkl, it has presaged ideas and scenes in the media. There are scenes in Rarebit Fiend in which a man kicks a dog, slaps a woman, beats a blind man, and throws another woman out a window, as in Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'Or (1930); giant characters let loose in the big city, climbing and damaging buildings and subway trains, as in King Kong (1933); elevators flying from buildings and other scenes as in the 2005 Tim Burton take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory although Tim Burton did not invent the scene as it featured in scenes in Dumbo (1941), Mary Poppins (1964), and others. The strip for March 9, 1907, in which a child's bedroom becomes a lion-infested jungle, anticipated the 1950 Ray Bradbury story "The Veldt", and the strip from September 26, 1908, which depicted a stretchable face, anticipated Salvador Dalí's surrealist painting "Soft self portrait with fried bacon" (1941), and the cosmetic surgeries in Terry Gilliam's Brazil. The strip was most likely an influence on episodes of Frank King's early comic strip Bobby Make-Believe. Many scholars believe that Carl Barks, a professed fan of Little Nemo, was likely exposed to Rarebit Fiend, which appeared in The San Francisco Examiner, which Barks read growing up. Several episodes of Barks' Donald Duck stories appear to have taken their subjects from Rarebit Fiend. Many scenes from animated films by Tex Avery from between 1943 and 1954 are said to show clearly a Rarebit Fiend influence. Science fiction illustrator Frank R. Paul painted a number of pulp magazine covers influenced by Rarebit Fiend. Art Spiegelman paid parodic homage to Rarebit Fiend in his 1974 strip "Real Dream". In 1991, Rick Veitch began producing short comics based on his dreams. Beginning in 1994, he put out 21 issues of Roarin' Rick's Rare Bit Fiends from his own King Hell Press. References Works cited Books * * * * * (on included DVD) * * |author = Dover editors |title = Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend |year = 1973 |publisher = Dover Publications, Inc |isbn = 978-0-486-21347-7}} * * * * * |last = Merkl |first = Ulrich |title = The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1904-1913) by Winsor McCay 'Silas' |year = 2007 |publisher = Ulrich Merkl |isbn = 978-3-00-020751-8}} * |last = Merkl |first = Ulrich |title = The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1904-1913) by Winsor McCay 'Silas' |location = Catolog of episodes & text of the book |type = .doc |year = 2007 |publisher = Ulrich Merkl |isbn = 978-3-00-020751-8}} (on included DVD) * * (on included DVD) * * |editor1-last = Fielding |editor1-first = Raymond |last = Theisen |first = Earl |title = A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television |url = http://books.google.com/books?id=cI06elnxvG4C&pg=PA84 |year = 1967 |origyear = 1933 |publisher = University of California Press |pages = 84–87 |chapter = The History of the Animated Cartooning |id = GGKEY:6ZBS232TCDQ}} Newspapers * |url = http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/brainiac/2007/10/waking_dream_of.html |title = Waking Dream of the Rarebit Fiend |first = Joshua |last = Glenn |author-link = Joshua Glenn |date = 2007-10-31 |newspaper = The Boston Globe |accessdate = 2012-06-28}} * |url = http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/brainiac/2007/11/rarebit_fiend.html |title = Rarebit Fiend! |first = Joshua |last = Glenn |author-link = Joshua Glenn |date = 2007-11-11 |newspaper = The Boston Globe |accessdate = 2012-06-25}} * |url = http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/01/08/the_dream_artist/ |title = The Dream Artist |first = Jeet |last = Heer |date = 2006-01-08 |newspaper = The Boston Globe |accessdate = 2012-06-25}} * |url = http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-persons/flying-house-podcast_b_925759.html |title = Mighty Movie Podcast: Bill Plympton on The Flying House |newspaper = The Huffington Post |first = Dan |last = Persons |date = 2011-08-15 |accessdate = 2012-10-16}} Web * |authorlink = Stephen R. Bissette |first = Stephen R. |last = Bissette |title = Dream of the Dream of the Rarebit Fiend: An Interview with Ulrich Merkl (with Three Addendums) |date = 2007-07-23 |publisher = Myrant |url = http://srbissette.blogspot.jp/2007/07/dream-of-dream-of-rarebit-fiend.html |accessdate = 2012-06-27}} * |title = Dream of the Rarebit Fiend: The Saturdays |date = 2008-03-12 |first = Matthew |last = Brady |url = http://www.comicsbulletin.com/reviews/120534415638131.htm |accessdate = 2012-10-05 |archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20081122180721/http://www.comicsbulletin.com/reviews/120534415638131.htm |archivedate = 2008-11-22 |publisher = Comics Bulletin}} * |url = http://www.aiga.org/the-rarebit-fiend-dreams-on-an-interview-with-ulrich-merkl/ |publisher = AIGA |title = The Rarebit Fiend Dreams On: An Interview with Ulrich Merkl |first = Steven |last = Heller |date = 2007-11-13 |accessdate = 2012-06-25}} * |url = http://www.toonopedia.com/rarebit.htm |title = Dream of the Rarebit Fiend |publisher = Don Markstein's Toonopedia |first = Don |last = Markstein |year = 2007 |accessdate = 2012-06-25}} * |authorlink2 = Stephen R. Bissette |first1 = Katie |last1 = Moody |first2 = Stephen R. |last2 = Bissette |title = Survey 1 Comic Strip Essays: Katie Moody on Winsor McCay’s "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend" |date = 2010-11-22 |publisher = Center for Cartoon Studies |url = http://www.cartoonstudies.org/schulz/blog/?p=1356 |accessdate = 2012-06-28}} * * |title = Graphic novels |publisher = Library Journal |first = Steve |last = Raiteri |date = 2006-03-15 |url = http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6314336.html |accessdate = 2012-10-05}} * |title = The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1904-1913) by Winsor McCay 'Silas". Ulrich Merkl, 2007. |url = http://www.brokenfrontier.com/columns/p/detail/cheesy-dreams |publisher = Broken Frontier |first = Beth Davies |last = Stofka |date = 2008-02-03 |accessdate = 2012-10-05}} * External links *[http://archive.org/details/DreamOfTheRarebitFiendAIndexOfTheFirstLines.ByTearyEyesAnderson Index of first lines in Rarebit Fiend strips] by Teary Eyes Anderson Strips *Complete scans from the Ulrich Merkl DVD at The Internet Archive *Archives of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend at Comic Strip Library Other *''The Burgess Nonsense Book'' (1901) by Gelett Burgess at the Internet Archive *''Welsh Rarebit Tales'' (1902) by Harle Oren Cummins at the Internet Archive Category:American comic strips Category:Comic strips by Winsor McCay Category:Comic strips started in the 1900s Category:Films based on comic strips Category:Films directed by Winsor McCay Category:Comic strips ended in the 1910s Category:Comic strips started in the 1920s Category:Comic strips ended in the 1920s